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Concept
Impact winter
Summary
An impact winter is a hypothesized period of prolonged cold weather due to the impact of a large asteroid or comet on the Earth's surface. If an asteroid were to strike land or a shallow body of water, it would eject an enormous amount of dust, ash, and other material into the atmosphere, blocking the radiation from the Sun. This would cause the global temperature to decrease drastically. If an asteroid or comet with the diameter of about or more were to hit in a large deep body of water or explode before hitting the surface, there would still be an enormous amount of debris ejected into the atmosphere. It has been proposed that an impact winter could lead to mass extinction, wiping out many of the world's existing species. The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event probably involved an impact winter, and led to mass extinction of most tetrapods weighing more than 25 kilograms (55 pounds).
Each year, the Earth is hit by diameter meteoroids that deliver an explosion above the surface with the power equivalent of one kiloton of TNT. The Earth is hit every day by a meteor less than in diameter that disintegrates before reaching the surface. The meteors that do make it to the surface tend to strike unpopulated areas and cause no harm. A human is more likely to die in a fire, flood, or other natural disaster than to die because of an asteroid or comet impact. Another study in 1994 found a 1-in-10,000 chance that the Earth will be hit by a large asteroid or comet with a diameter of about during the next century. This object would be capable of disrupting the ecosphere and would kill a large fraction of the world's population. One such object, Asteroid 1950 DA, currently has a 0.005% chance of colliding with Earth in the year 2880, though when first discovered the probability was 0.3%. The probability goes down as orbits are refined with additional measurements.
Over 300 short-period comets pass near larger planets, such as Saturn and Jupiter, which can change the comets' trajectories and could potentially put them into an Earth-crossing orbit.
Official source
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